Clayton, 23, had played a key role for Leeds last season and had not expected to be sacrificed by Warnock, who was desperate to free-up finances at Elland Road in a bid to strengthen his squad during the summer.

"I went into (Warnock's) office expecting the end-of-season chat and he said 'I'm selling you,"' said Clayton, for whom former Leeds boss Simon Grayson paid £400,000 to take him to Huddersfield.

"It was quite a shock to the system and I was quite upset on the way home. I didn't think I was going to go.

"I'd been looking at houses in Leeds and it was a case of walking into the meeting laughing and discussing what everyone else was discussing - which was 'who do you think are the players he's letting go?' I wasn't expecting the old hammer blow.

"He said he was more than happy to keep me, but he got an attractive enough offer to let me go. I decided to leave and I'm very thankful to have come to a place on the up."

The former Manchester City trainee, who spent two years at Leeds, added: "It was nothing to do with my terms or anything like that. The gaffer agreed to what I wanted and he went in to try and do it. It broke down a bit higher up I think and we had to part ways in the end."

Readers' Comments

I

t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.